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a human thing; and more often than not, it resides in falsehood rather than in truth, whether that falsehood becomes established in the relations between us and other people or presides over the relations between us and ourselves. For, in order to avoid the ugly irregularities and roughnesses of the truth, a fabrication which achieves its purpose without obstacles or misgivings is more effective than a scrupulous mode of action which sticks closely to the matter in hand. As I have said, I might have become suspicious of my affairs going so smoothly, after ten or more years of fruitless attempts. But happiness, besides making us selfish, often makes us thoughtless and superficial as well. I told myself that my meeting with my wife had been the spark which had at last set alight this great and generous blaze; and beyond the recognition of this fact I did not go.
    I was so much absorbed in my work that I did not pay much attention to a small but curious incident that took place at that time. I have a very sensitive skin and shaving is always a difficulty to me - that is, it is always inclined to produce a rash or other irritations. For this reason I-have never been able to shave myself and have always made use, as I still do, of the services of a barber. Even at the villa, as everywhere else, I arranged to be shaved by a barber every morning. He came from the village near by, where he kept the only barber's shop, which was, in truth, a very modest one. He used to come on a bicycle, and made his appearance exactly at half-past twelve, having in fact closed his shop at twelve. His arrival was the signal for me to stop work. It coincided likewise with the best moment of my day, with the release of that indiscreet and entirely physical gaiety I have already described, which came from a sense of work well done.
    This barber was a short, broad-shouldered man, completely bald from front to back, with a thick neck and a plump face. In figure he was thickset but not fat. In his face, which was of a uniform yellowish brown so that he looked as though he still had the remains of an attack of jaundice, the most noticeable feature was the eyes, large and round with very conspicuous whites, and with a clear, questioning, surprised, possibly ironical look in them. He had a small nose and a wide but lipless mouth, in which his rare smiles disclosed two rows of dark and broken teeth. His chin retreated sharply, and in it was a strange, repellent dimple, like a navel. Antonio's voice - for that was his name - was soft and extraordinarily quiet; and his hand, as I noticed from the very first day, had an uncommon lightness and dexterity. He was a man of about forty and, as I knew, had a wife and five children. One last detail: he was not a Tuscan but a Sicilian, from a village in the middle of Sicily. As the result of an amorous connexion which he had formed during his military service, he had been induced to marry and settle down in this village, where he had subsequently opened a barber's shop. His wife worked on a farm, but she left it on Saturdays and went and helped her husband to shave the numerous clients who flocked to the shop on the day before the holiday.
    Antonio was very punctual. Every day at half-past twelve I could hear, through the open window, the crunching of the gravel beneath his bicycle wheels in the drive below; and this, for me, was the signal for breaking off work. A moment later he would be knocking at the door of my study; and I, rising from my desk, would shout joyfully to him to come in. He would open the door, enter, close it again carefully and, with a slight bow, wish me good morning. With him came the maid, carrying a small jug of boiling water which she would put down on a little wheeled table where soap, brush and razors were laid out. Antonio would push this little table close to the armchair in which I, in the meantime, had seated myself. He would spend some time stropping the razor, with his back turned to me;